The historic Bob Dylan/ Johnny Cash recording sessions that resulted in one duet, “Girl From the North Country,” being officially released took place on February 17 and 18, 1969 in Nashville.
The recordings are so casual, and at times joyous. These guys are having fun, fooling around, making music.
It’s a total gas.
Here is a wonderful version of Cash’s “I Walk the Line.”
Here’s more of the sessions – note that after “I Still Miss Someone” there’s a silent gap and then the music starts up again:
Setlist:
1- MOUNTAIN DEW
2- I STILL MISS SOMEONE
3- CARELESS LOVE
4- MATCHBOX
5- THAT’S ALRIGHT MAMA
6- BIG RIVER
7- I WALK THE LINE
8- YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE
9- RING OF FIRE
10- GUESS THINGS HAPPEN THAT WAY
11- JUST, A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE
12- BLUE YODEL
13- BLUE YODEL #5 ~THE JOHNNY CASH SHOW:~ 05-01-69
14- I THREW IT ALL AWAY
15- LIVING THE BLUES
16- GIRL, FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
Of just buy the damn thing:
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Bob Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration took place on October 16, 1992 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
An amazing group of artists assembled to offer tribute to Bob Dylan.
The first video below, is the first half of the concert.
The second video is an eclectic mix of songs from the entire concert but it does include George Harrison, Neil Young, Tom Petty and others that are not in the first video.
Part One:
Misc. songs:
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On May 1, 1969, 45 years ago, Bob Dylan’s appearance on “The Johnny Cash Show” was taped at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Dylan did two songs on his own — “I Threw It All Away” and “Living the Blues” and then was joined by Johnny Cash for “Girl From the North Country,” a song they sang together on his latest album, Nashville Skyline.
Watch two video clips at the bottom of this post, plus audio of the third song.
After Johnny Cash died on September 12, 1003, Bob Dylan was asked for a comment. This is what he wrote:
I was asked to give a statement on Johnny’s passing and thought about writing a piece instead called “Cash Is King,” because that is the way I really feel. In plain terms, Johnny was and is the North Star; you could guide your ship by him — the greatest of the greats then and now. I first met him in ’62 or ’63 and saw him a lot in those years. Not so much recently, but in some kind of way he was with me more than people I see every day.
There wasn’t much music media in the early Sixties, and Sing Out! was the magazine covering all things folk in character. The editors had published a letter chastising me for the direction my music was going. Johnny wrote the magazine back an open letter telling the editors to shut up and let me sing, that I knew what I was doing. This was before I had ever met him, and the letter meant the world to me. I’ve kept the magazine to this day.
Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me. In ’55 or ’56, “I Walk the Line” played all summer on the radio, and it was different than anything else you had ever heard. The record sounded like a voice from the middle of the earth. It was so powerful and moving. It was profound, and so was the tone of it, every line; deep and rich, awesome and mysterious all at once. “I Walk the Line” had a monumental presence and a certain type of majesty that was humbling. Even a simple line like “I find it very, very easy to be true” can take your measure. We can remember that and see how far we fall short of it.
Johnny wrote thousands of lines like that. Truly he is what the land and country is all about, the heart and soul of it personified and what it means to be here; and he said it all in plain English. I think we can have recollections of him, but we can’t define him any more than we can define a fountain of truth, light and beauty. If we want to know what it means to be mortal, we need look no further than the Man in Black. Blessed with a profound imagination, he used the gift to express all the various lost causes of the human soul. This is a miraculous and humbling thing. Listen to him, and he always brings you to your senses. He rises high above all, and he’ll never die or be forgotten, even by persons not born yet — especially those persons — and that is forever.
The show aired on June 7, 1969.
Here’s a great piece that ran in Rolling Stoneabout Dylan’s appearance on the show.
“I Threw It All Away”:
“Living the Blues”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Girl From the North Country”:
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Bob Dylan and John Lennon, very stoned, talking in the back of a cab in 1966. What’s amazing about this is that here we’ve got two of the greatest rock music minds of the 20th century and what should be a momentous occasion is, well, not much different than any two guys, stoned, talking about nothing.
This is from Dylan’s film, “Eat the Document.”
This version is tinted blue.
This version is just audio but it goes on for almost three more minutes.
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Devo Redux: Devo will perform its experimental music from 1974-1977 on a North American tour this summer. The 10-date North American tour is dedicated to the memory of the late Robert “Bob 2″ Casale, whose family will get a portion of the proceeds. According to Bob 2’s brother Gerald, Gerald Casale, Bob 2 “had no will or insurance.” — Slicing Up Eyeballs
Dylan’s Bed Jumping: Bob Dylan jumped on Johnny Cash’s bed the first time they met, according to the account the singer gave to his son, John Carter Cash which he commented about in a Reddit Q&A. Johnny Cash met Dylan in a New York City hotel room in the early Sixties. Although they had exchanged letters, upon finally meeting one another, “Dylan rushed into his room, jumped on the bed and began bouncing up and down chanting, ‘I met Johnny Cash, I met Johnny Cash.'” Although they fell out of touch as time went by, they remained friends. — Rolling Stone
Break the Code?: Fans think they’ve discovered the release date for ç upcoming album in a teaser video released this week. The date? May 26, 2014. Time will tell. — NME
Check out the video for yourself:
Gimme Money!: Neil Young’s PonoMusic Kickstarter campaign has now passed the $5 million mark. As of Saturday, March 29, 2014 14,808 people had contributed $5,006,618.
A Love Supreme: Six rolls of undeveloped film shot by Chuck Stewart during sessions for John Coltrane’s transcendent album, A Love Supreme, were found by his son. Check out a few of the photos at the NPR website. — NPR
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Music for Robots is a new EP that Squarepusher made with robots. “The Z-Machines are three robots created by Japanese roboticists with the purpose of performing music that’s too advanced for the most skilled human musicians,” Pitchfork reports. “There’s a guitarist robot with 78 fingers and a drummer with 22 arms.” About working with the Z-Machines, Squarepusher said in a statement: “In this project the main question I’ve tried to answer is ‘can these robots play music that is emotionally engaging?’ I have long admired the player piano works of Conlon Nancarrow and Gyorgy Ligeti. Part of the appeal of that music has to do with hearing a familiar instrument being ‘played’ in an unfamiliar fashion. For me there has always been something fascinating about the encounter of the unfamiliar with the familiar. I have long been an advocate of taking fresh approaches to existing instrumentation as much as I am an advocate of trying to develop new instruments, and being able to rethink the way in which, for example, an electric guitar can be used is very exciting. Each of the robotic devices involved in the performance of this music has its own specification which permits certain possibilities and excludes others – the robot guitar player for example can play much faster than a human ever could, but there is no amplitude control. In the same way that you do when you write music for a human performer, these attributes have to be borne in mind – and a particular range of musical possibilities corresponds to those attributes. Consequently, in this project familiar instruments are used in ways which till now have been impossible.” — Pitchfork
AC/DC Heading Into the Studio: AC/DC singer Brian Johnson told a Florida radio station that the band will be going into the studio in Vancouver this May. The band is also planning a 40th anniversary tour for later this year. — Rolling Stone
Tom Waits Pens Song For Bluesman John Hammond: John Hammond’s new album is called Timeless and includes a song Tom Waits wrote specifically for Hammond called “No One Can Forgive Me But My Baby.” “He came to a recording date I was doing in San Francisco in 1992,” Hammond said. “John Lee Hooker had sat in to do a duet with me, and Tom Waits appeared out of nowhere and said, ‘I have a song for you, man.’ It was about 20 minutes long, with everybody in the Bible coming down to the river. I said, ‘Gee, you know, it’s a great song, but I don’t think I could do anything like that.’ He said, ‘Oh, you don’t like that one?’ So he goes into the control room.” About ten minutes later, according to Hammond, Waits returns with a new song he’d just written. “So I did it,” Hammond said. “He had left by the time we completed it, and so I sent him a cassette of it. And I hadn’t heard from him for a while, so I called — and he had it on his answering machine. I guess he liked it.” — NPR
Spoon’s Britt Daniel Has A Second Side Project: Britt Daniel isn’t content to Lead Spoon and play guitar in Divine Fits. Now he’s got a third band, Split Single that includes Daniel on bass and backing vocals, frontman Jason Narducy (ex-Verbow, also of Bob Mould’s band) and Superchunk/Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster. The group’s debut album, Fragmented World, will be out April 1, 2014. Check out a trailor for the album below. — Pitchfork
Lost album from Johnny Cash: As I previously reported, Johnny Cash recorded an album with producer Billy Sherrill in the early ’80s but the album was shelved when Cash left Columbia Records in 1986. That will change on March 25, 2014 when the album, Out Among the Stars, will finally be released. Here’s another track off it. “I’m Moving On” Bincludes vocals from Waylon Jennings:
The Notwist Return With New Album: Close To The Glass is the new album from the German electro-pop band, The Notwist. Read more about it and listen to the whole thing at NPR’s First Listen. — NPR
Hip-Hop Collaboration: New song, “97.92,” from Sacramento’s Trash Talk and Brooklyn rappers Flatbush Zombies. — Stereogum
Plus a mini-documentary on Trash Talk from Pitchfork:
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Yesterday I did a post about the first Nashville Skyline session to produce music that ended up on the album. (There was an unproductive session the previous day but no information about what was recorded has surfaced.)
Aside from the resulting album, Nashville Skyline, a country gem that is as peculiar as it is enjoyable, what is most interesting about the making of the album has to do with a guest artist who joined Dylan in the studio on February 18, 1969.
Johnny Cash!
Previously Dylan hadn’t had much luck working with other big stars. Things were awkward with John Lennon, and he didn’t care for Andy Warhol at all, according to those who were at the Factory when Dylan met Warhol.
But with Johnny Cash Dylan hit pay dirt. Their recording of “Girl From the North Country” is terrific, and some of other others are wonderful.
So today I’m posting a bunch of songs from the Dylan/Cash session plus an alternative take of “Country Pie” from the February 14, 1968 session.
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “One Too Many Mornings” take 1:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “One Too Many Mornings” version 2:
Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash, “I Still Miss Someone”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Careless Love”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “That’s Alright Mama”:
Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash, “Big River”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Girl From the North Country,” this is on Nashville Skyline but it’s awesome so I couldn’t leave it out:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “I Walk the Line”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Guess Things Happen That Way”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Just A Closer Walk With Thee”:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Blue Yodel” version 1:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, “Blue Yodel” version 2:
“Country Pie,” alternative version with steel guitar:
